Detroit Escorts: Detroit women ID’d amid probe of escort ads
December 31, 2011 at 4:36 am | In Detroit escorts | No CommentsDetroit women ID’d amid probe of escort ads
Posted: Dec 30, 2011 7:00 PM by CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) — Authorities have identified three of the four women found dead this month in two incidents in Detroit, an investigator with the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday.
Three of the women have been linked to a website that accepts ads for escort services, police have said.
In the latest case, one of the two women found early Christmas Day in the trunk of a car that had been set afire was identified as Vernithea McCrary, 28, the investigator said.
The second victim remains unidentified, said the investigator, who asked not to be identified because he is not allowed to speak on the record to the news media.
The bodies of two other women found December 19 have been identified as Demesha Hunt, 24, and Renisha Landers, 23. They were found in the trunk of Landers’ Chrysler 300.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Detroit women ID’d amid probe of escort ads
December 30, 2011 at 11:49 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No Comments… Our team has already provided the police with detailed information about the ads that the suspect or others posted on numerous web sites. Law enforcement authorities now have evidence that the investigation appears to connect to at least 30 different ads or other postings on at least 15 different websites, separate and distinct from ours,” Suskin said.
“We are not aware of the existence of any evidence that would indicate which of these many sites were used by the suspect to establish contact with his victims.”
Backpage representatives have been cooperating with police, the police chief said.
Postings on the escort section of the website cost $1. Referring to the advertisements on the website as “borderline prostitution,” Godbee said that his priorities lie elsewhere. “Right now, we want to get to the bottom of how these four individuals passed away, and who had a hand in their demise,” he said.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Detroit police say killings may be linked to Backpage.com ads
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsSince Dec. 19, the bodies of four women have been found in car trunks just blocks apart in Detroit. Police Chief Ralph Godbee is not calling them serial killings, but investigators do say three of the four victims had placed escort service ads on Backpage.com.
Attorneys general for 45 states had raised concerns earlier this year about how the site polices ads for adult services.
Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna has been trying to get the site taken down for months. In an interview with CNN, McKenna said Backpage.com is dangerous and promotes child prostitution.
“As long as they tolorate ads for prostitution, which they admitted when they met with my staff, they are creating a place on the Internet that people go to for adult protstitutes and child prostitutes,” said McKenna.
See the full article from “KING5.com”
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Bonnie and Clyde 2011? Man and women arrested for string of Metro Detroit bank …
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsFBI investigators on Wednesday arrested a man accused of robbing several banks in Farmington, Farmington Hills, Novi and Livonia and say he used female accomplices to carry out the jobs.
Fox 2 reports that 44-year-old Arthur Payton would recruit women, often prostitutes, to go in the banks wearing disguises and later pay them after completing the robbery. The women never used weapons, but did threaten violence if tellers did not cooperate.
“She would actually go inside and commit the robbery and meet him afterward, and after that he would pay her $500-$1,000 for each job,” FBI spokesman Simon Shaykhet told the TV station.
33-year-old Nancy Barta was also arrested. FBI officials say her cooperation led to the capture of Payton, who has robbed several other banks in the past.FBI officials say Payton was casing out another series of banks at the time of his arrest.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: After deaths in Detroit, Backpage.com advertising comes under scrutiny
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsIn August, 46 state attorneys general in the US sent Village Voice Media a letter requesting that it remove adult-services advertising from the website. “While Backpage.com professes to have undertaken efforts to limit advertisements for prostitution on its website, particularly those soliciting sex with children, such efforts have proven ineffective,” the letter read.
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In several instances, federal courts have upheld the law despite police concerns about safety. One notable example: an October 2009 decision in Chicago that struck down an attempt by Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart to hold Craigslist responsible for 156 prostitution arrests linked to postings on that website.
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What protects online sites like Backpage.com is that “for there to be a crime involving speech, there must be a close proximity between the speech and the criminal activity,” Obenberger says. Advertising for prostitution does not qualify under this standard, he says.
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The website accounts for two-thirds of all prostitution advertising on the Web, according to Advanced Interactive Media, which defines prostitution advertising as that for escorts and body rubs.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Wire News provided by
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsRALITSA VASSILEVA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: She says that was after soldiers had tied her, forced her to the ground, and shocked her with a stun gun, calling her a prostitute.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Do you remember this story, virginity tests for female protesters in Egypt. We have big new developments for you coming up. Plus, brand-new video of the devastating floods in the Philippines, also new details on the death toll and the hundreds of people who are still missing. That is straight ahead.
And we have all jumped on an escalator in our lifetime, right? How about this one? It’s 18 stories tall. We go “Globe Trekking” right after this very quick break.
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VASSILEVA: She says that was after soldiers had tied her, forced her to the ground, and shocked her with a stun gun, calling her a prostitute.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Village Voice Media’s Classified Ad Network Could Be In Big Trouble After …
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsWhat makes Backpage.com unusual is its adult services, including escort and body-rub advertising, which represented $2.1 million in revenue in November alone, according to AimGroup.com. For a struggling newspaper business that gives away many of its products for free, that’s significant.
But the service is also onto its second controversy of late 2011. First, there was criticism over concerns of underage prostitution being facilitated by the site, which ended up with VVM snared in a weird quarrel with Ashton Kutcher. (VVM said only 14% of the site’s advertising is adult-related.)
Now, the site is being investigated in connection to the deaths of four women in Detroit last weekend. Three of them had escort profiles on Backpage.com.
The Christian Science Monitor’s Mark Guarino spoke to Chicago attorney Joe Obenberger, who specializes in adult entertainment law. He writes:
Detroit Adult Entertainment: After 4 women die brutally in Detroit, scrutiny of escort services on web
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsA month after the letter was sent, a coalition of clergy published a full-page ad in The New York Times requesting that Village Voice Media remove such advertising to prevent “compromising the lives of our nation’s boys and girls.”
Village Voice Media insists it has cooperated fully with law enforcement to prevent sex trafficking and says it is one of many sites that host adult advertising. The core of its argument is free speech: “Neither government officials nor God’s advocates can dictate such arbitrary control of business or speech,” it said in a statement.
Websites like Backpage.com are protected under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, says Joe Obenberger, an attorney in Chicago who specializes in adult entertainment law. That act protects online operators from criminal wrongdoing even if the advertising they host promotes prostitution or other illegal acts, such as advertising under which housing discrimination is present.
Detroit Adult Entertainment: City buys Triple-X domain name to protect Windsor’s online reputation
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsWINDSOR, Ont. — To avoid any indecent Internet exposure, some of the city’s biggest institutions are snapping up corresponding domain names ending in “.xxx” to make sure they are never bought by or associated with adult entertainment websites.
Mary Rodgers, who works in marketing and communications at the city, said the IT department had just purchased www.citywindsor.xxx on Tuesday.
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Domain names ending in .xxx make up a new category of adult entertainment websites. The domains went on sale to the public on Dec. 6.
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Since the university’s website is often the first exposure prospective students have to the school, it was important to make sure that if someone typed “University of Windsor” into Google, they would be directed to the university’s website and not an adult entertainment site, Ward said.
See the full article from “Windsor Star”
Detroit Adult Entertainment: Keeping it clean: institutions buying up .xxx Internet domain names
December 30, 2011 at 3:25 pm | In Detroit adult entertainment | No CommentsWINDSOR, Ont. â To avoid any indecent Internet exposure, many Canadian institutions are snapping up corresponding domain names ending in “.xxx” to make sure they are never bought by or associated with adult entertainment websites.
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The Vancouver-based company Webnames.ca was the first Canadian registrar chosen to sell the triple-x domain names for IMC Registry to Canadian clients. Webnames.ca sold names with the triple-x extension to companies buying them defensively, to block their use. However, Webnames.ca is not selling triple-x names to those in the adult entertainment industry, said Nicholas Caristinos, an account manager at Webnames.ca.
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Since the university’s website is often the first exposure prospective students have to the school, it was important to make sure that if someone typed “University of Windsor” into Google, they would be directed to the university’s website and not to an adult entertainment site, Ward said.
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